the challenges of dating church women

How Fast Should We Move In a Relationship

Most non-church dating advice says that the best way to get a date is to be aggressive. Attraction has to be immediate and if a man doesn’t move immediately his opportunity is lost. In fact many sites will go so far as to say that the only way to have success is to have sex as quickly as possible.

Those of us in the church don’t believe this. Our society, both in and out of the Christian community, is much less conservative on sex than it used to be. 30 years ago couples living together couldn’t darken the door of a church, not it’s mostly just ignored. But fundamentally, I think we can all agree, that casual sex is definitely not OK.

So the question I pose today is, what should a Christian dating relationship look like. Sure, there are times when that initial attraction is there, but many Christian women, specifically Christian women that are 30+ are hesitant to jump into a dating relationship immediately upon meeting someone. If a man joins a church or church related group and immediately asks a woman out, he will probably be seen as a predator or outcast.

But, if you don’t immediately go there, you get put in what is commonly called the “friend zone”

Now what I have noticed personally over the last couple years in my social interactions with church singles is that slower interactions seem to work. One of my failures may have been due to moving too slow, but the others have primarily been due to moving too fast.

Also, this may be due to the demographic. Most of the women I have interacted with have been in their 30s. Either never been married or divorced, often ugly divorces. The church is a place of healing and tends to attract broken people. It takes time to build trust and move to a place where they are ready to have a relationship.

So, if there are any women out there that stumble across this, I would love to get some ideas of how fast things should move. Would you be more likely to date a new guy, or want to build a relationship over time with someone you can trust? And please, be honest, sure building a friendship sounds like a grand idea, but seems like it rarely works.